At a data center providing outsourced network services to a plurality of clients, various kinds of resources such as processing power and network bandwidth are to be used effectively, and such resources are allocated in a way that meets the demands of the clients. The amount of resources each client needs changes over time and a pattern of such changes differs depending on the clients. Therefore, the data center periodically changes the amount of resources allocated to each client.
An auction method is known as a method of periodically changing the amount of resources allocated to clients in a way that meets the demands of clients (see Kevin Lai, Bernardo A. Huberman, Leslie Fine, “Tycoon: A Distributed Market-based Resource Allocation System”, [online], HP Laboratories, 2004, retrieved on 2007 Aug. 2 from the Internet, and Carl A. Waldspurger, Tod Hogg, Bernardo A. Huberman, Jeffrey O. Kephart, Scott Stornetta, “Spawn: A Distributed Computational Economy”, [online], 1991, retrieved on 2007 Aug. 2 from the Internet. With the auction method, an auction is held at predetermined intervals for a transaction unit, which is a certain segmented amount of resources, and, at each interval, a transaction unit is allocated to a client who offers the highest bid price for the transaction unit. In such an auction method, a client offers a bid price corresponding to the demand from the client himself/herself for each transaction unit, and, as a result, various kinds of resources can be properly allocated in a way that meets the demands of the clients.
For example, there are a client A, who needs a large amount of resource at the beginning of a month, and a client B, who needs a large amount of resource at the end of a month. In this case, the client A is expected to put a large portion of his/her budget to auctions at the beginning of a month so that he/she can make successful bids and win a sufficient amount of resource at the beginning of the month, whereas the client B is expected to allocate a large amount of his/her budget on auctions at the end of a month so that he/she can make successful bids and win a sufficient amount of resource at the end of the month. As such, with the auction method of allocating resources, clients adjust their budget distribution in a way that meets the pattern of their demands so that the resources can be properly allocated in a way that meets the demands of the clients.
However, when resources are allocated with the conventional auction method, clients may not obtain a sufficient amount of resources they need because of their poor strategies. For example, a client who needs a large amount of resources at the end of a month may use up a large portion of his/her budget at the beginning of a month to win a competition against other clients, and he/she may not be able to obtain a sufficient amount of resources at the end of the month, when a large amount of resources is needed, because of the shortage of money.